Piers Akerman
–,
Thursday,
May,
31,
2012,(4:14am)

I am not crying for Julian Assange, never have and will not start now.

He has lost his battle against extradition to Sweden in Britain’s Supreme Court but he has at least had access to court of law, something he denied those he condemned to death after publicly identifying them through the illegal publication of stolen files.

His extradition case had nothing to with WikiLeaks though, it was about a Swedish warrant for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The case dragged on for 18 months as his legal team fought the warrant on the grounds that it was issued by a Swedish prosecutor, not a judge, and therefore the issuer did not constitute a “judicial authority”.

Hair-splitting isn’t in it and the court found five-two against him – a decision which was described by “our” ABC as “narrow”.

Piers Akerman
–,
Wednesday,
May,
30,
2012,(5:01am)

Confronted by a memo recommending Craig Thomson’s case be referred to the police three years ago, Julia Gillard wants Parliament to move on.

The memo was sent in June, 2009, from Australian Industrial Registrar, Doug Williams, to Terry Nassios, an officer at Fair Work Australia.

The registrar sent the note about the investigation which had begun two months earlier as registrar was being abolished by Labor and replaced by FWA with Nassios taking over the investigation.

The memo could not be clearer. It outlines the course of the inquiry and states: “There should be a clear plan and actions arising from the outcomes of the inquiry to date … including, inter alia, any actions and referrals to other authorities (eg, to the police because of identified malfeasance)”.

Piers Akerman
–,
Tuesday,
May,
29,
2012,(5:10am)

Julia Gillard owes her position to the Independents, the Greens and Craig Thomson.

Yesterday, Thomson repaid her for the ongoing support she has offered him.

While you would be searching to find anyone who believes Thomson, let alone trust him, he showed why Gillard is not dumping him.

She relies on his vote (along with those of the Greens and Independents) to stay in power and yesterday he repaid Gillard for her support by blocking an investigation into the $10 billion Green slush fund, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The corporation is designed to provide money to the Greens’ lunatic schemes for the deployment of renewable energy and low-emission technologies that cannot find commercial backers.

Piers Akerman
–,
Monday,
May,
28,
2012,(5:54am)

Julia Gillard’s Labor colleagues will have to swallow another big Gillard lie tomorrow or accept the reality that their government is totally incompetent.

The lie relates to the approval of foreign mine workers Migration Minister Chris Bowen gave the green light to last week.

Gillard claims she only learnt of the deal on Wednesday but government sources agree that the Prime Minister’s office was told of the agreement at least six days earlier and that it was included in Treasurer Wayne Swan’s 2011 Budget.

Gillard owes her job to the unrepresentative trade union movement. She is theirs.

She has wasted a lot of political capital defending Craig Thomson who has been found by Fair Work Australia (another Gillard creation) to have rorted the workers’ funds he was meant to protect.

Piers Akerman
–,
Saturday,
May,
26,
2012,(6:22pm)

Labor’s years in office from 2007 to the present can be summed up as the journey from Scores to whores.

The troubled MP Craig Thomson is no more than the personification of Labor’s infinite capacity to delude itself.

It long ago lost the trust of the Australian people, largely thanks to Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s primal political “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”.

Since then, the dissembling has flowed like the Brisbane River in flood, sweeping away honesty, integrity and dignity in a spate of polluted rhetoric.

Never has an Australian prime minister brought the office into such disrepute. Until recently it was a grave step to label any politician a liar, now Gillard is justifiably so labelled in almost every commentary.

Thomson began last week with a 59-minute exposition of his case.

It was totally unsatisfactory.

He did not address Fair Work Australia’s findings, he named people he said would substantiate his claims but all declined to enter the debate on his side.

He finished the week with another address, this time asking to be left alone.

Labor would be delighted if the opposition and media stopped asking about the former Health Services Union’s boss’s alleged abuse of union funds and spending on hookers (which he denies), but there are reasons this matter should be resolved and the question of whether he has misled parliament must be settled.

His plea to be left alone has been seized upon by Labor MPs as a good reason for inquiries to stop.

It is an appeal for clemency on the grounds of mental fragility.

While there is concern for Thomson, for Labor MPs to make such an appeal is the height of hypocrisy.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott suggested Labor permit Thomson to take leave from parliament but Labor seems determined to keep him in the firing line to shore up numbers _ though Gillard has said he “crossed a line” and banished him to the cross benches.

Labor MPs are even protesting that Thomson must be given an Opposition pair should he absent himself from parliament, but there is no precedent for independent members getting a pair and Labor can’t explain why the opposition should provide such a pair.

Thomson was, after all, cut loose by Gillard herself.

He is in no-man’s land. Even his former party seems to have withdrawn the minder who was keeping an eye on him.

Labor’s display of concern for Thomson’s mental state is at odds with its history.

It didn’t show compassion for former Labor senator Mal Colston in 1997 when he was stricken with cancer; or Victorian ALP MP Greg Wilton in 2000 when he was under such duress that actually took his own life; or to former governor-general Peter Hollingworth who Labor hounded from office in 2003; or public servant Godwin Grech who was subjected to a political witch-hunt by Labor in 2009.

Senator Robert Ray unloaded on Colston in the Senate on March 4, 1997, saying: “If it is a matter of principle, there is nothing wrong with a senator resigning from a political party in this place. The crime is staying here.

“If you are principled and if you do believe for some reason you no longer share the philosophy and views of your party, you put a letter in to you, Madam President.

“You resign from this chamber and you go. You do not stay here for grubby venal reasons. You do not sell your services to the other side. That is a tradition of the Labor Party and anyone who rats on the Labor Party will get exactly what this quisling Quasimodo from Queensland got.”

Former opposition leader Mark Latham wrote extensively about his friend Wilton, before and after his suicide. Before Wilton’s death, he noted in his diary for May 29, 2000: “I know politics is a tough game but I am still unnerved by the conversation. Kim ... doesn’t know him that well and seemed distant from the problems Pills (Wilton) had to deal with.”

After Wilton’s funeral on June 20, 2000, Latham wrote of Labor’s “betrayal of one of its own”.

“This is not the Labor Party I joined, not the Labor Party that’s supposed to be about compassion and social justice. Where was the justice, the fair go, for poor old Pills?” he wrote.

Latham expressed his hope that Wilton’s children would learn that “their dad was a good man, a great mate _ a victim, yes, at his own hand, but also in the hands of others. The sewer we belong to called the Labor Party.”

Hollingworth, who was never charged with anything, is still suffering from the attacks unleashed under parliamentary privilege by (current) Labor ministers Simon Crean and Nicola Roxon.

Grech was hospitalised after Labor’s furious onslaught during which he was subjected to an Audit Office investigation, an internal Treasury and Deloitte investigation, a Federal Police investigation, Director of Public Prosecutions deliberations and a politically cooked Privileges Committee investigation as well as media critics and attacks from the ALP, Greens and some in the Coalition.

He spent six months in a mental hospital, suffered renal failure and was forced to resign, losing his only source of income.

He remains unemployed. He was never charged with anything, didn’t steal, or abuse funds in his trust to indulge his fantasies.

Contrary to Labor’s assertion, parliament does act as judge and jury.

Members are suspended regularly. Parliament has the power to imprison or fine, publicly reprimand, require an apology or exclude MPs from the parliamentary precincts.

The Hawke government’s Speaker, Joan Childs, notoriously suspended a Coalition MP for remarks made outside the house _ no justice there.

From a sleazy starting point, the Rudd-Gillard government has reached a sleazy destination and dragged the nation down a highway strewn with lies.

Piers Akerman
–,
Wednesday,
May,
23,
2012,(5:48am)

The longer Craig Thomson lingers in parliament, the stronger the stench that surrounds him and the Labor government.

When the light shines on Thomson, it illuminates the rotten government that supports him.

Last night he was referred for the second time to the Parliamentary privileges committee for allegedly misleading Parliament during his one-hour show-and-tell session Monday.

He had already been referred to the committee Monday for failing to declare on the pecuniary interests register that the Labor Party had been paying his legal bills.

One might have thought that Thomson and the ALP would have been eager for the public to know about this expensive act of compassion for a former trade union boss accused of rorting his entitlements to pay for whores and the high life, but apparently not so.

Piers Akerman
–,
Tuesday,
May,
22,
2012,(4:02am)

Craig Thomson has almost completely trashed federal parliament with his ludicrous address.

Its final fall will be at the hands of the Labor Party, its Independent parasites Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, and the Greens if they continue to refuse to let Thomson be examined for probably breach of parliamentary privilege.

According to Thomson, his old trade union is riddled with corruption, Prime Minister Julia Gillard is part of a massive plot with more gimmicks at its command than 007 ever packed in his Aston Martin, all his old trade union mates are crooks and liars, and Tony Abbott is really running the show.

Gillard’s own creation, Fair Work Australia, is corrupt, which puts Fair Work Minister Bill Shorten in the corrupt corner, too.

Piers Akerman
–,
Monday,
May,
21,
2012,(6:50am)

Craig Thomson has come to personify the face of the corrupt Labor-union marriage.

His features will further be embedded in the public consciousness after his exposition in Parliament today.

It should be an interesting appearance but don’t expect much more than whining self-justification and some bizarre accusations directed toward others who have not been given the support of the ALP, the union movement, or parliamentary privilege to dodge their attackers.

Whether Health Services Union deputy secretary Marco Bolano ever threatened to set him up with prostitutes seven years ago, a claim Bolano told The Daily Telegraph today was “nonsense”, is really immaterial.

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Piers has been one of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph's best-read columnists since 1993. One of the nation's most respected journalists he has worked in New York, London, Washington and Los Angeles.